After more than three years, Washington continues to fumble its way through a response to Sudan’s heart-wrenching war. This past week, it may have inadvertently backed itself into a diplomatic corner that offers no options for either itself or Sudan’s army to exit, putting a ceasefire even further out of reach.
As world leaders gathered in New York for the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly, Washington pressed hard on the leaders of the Sudanese armed forces (SAF) to sign an unconditional ceasefire that would freeze the conflict and allow unimpeded access for critical aid deliveries.
In the past, the rebel Rapid Support Forces militia, using the ample diplomatic and public relations support from its chief regional backer, has been quick to agree to any deal that puts it on equal footing with the national army it is seeking to unseat. But with no intention or ability to implement the terms of any ceasefire, the RSF’s commitment to peace is likely worth what one would expect from a mercenary army that has committed multiple rounds of genocide. Still, United States officials repeatedly refer to the RSF in diplomatic circles as the more “cooperative party”.
In that light, since earlier this year, Washington’s pressure campaign has been focused on the SAF almost exclusively in the misguided belief that sufficient pressure would bring the army to its knees and cause it to abandon its effort to liberate the millions of Sudan’s civilians trapped under RSF rule. But 20 years of comprehensive US sanctions on Sudan, far more biting and wide-ranging than anything Presidents Donald Trump’s or Joe Biden’s administrations have imposed, should have taught the Trump team that sanctions in Sudan are not instruments to be used tactically. This is a regime capable of withstanding US pressure over the long run.
Nonetheless, a new round of US sanctions against SAF military procurement networks in June was followed by the imposition of chemical weapons sanctions in July despite the lack of any credible attempt to investigate the facts of their use on the ground. Later, in August, the US added to its punitive approach by tabling a new initiative at the UN to impose a countrywide arms embargo, updating the Darfur arms embargo dating from the first Darfur genocide in the early 2000s, which the RSF and its regional backers have flouted on a nearly daily basis since the start of the war.
Washington’s latest move was widely interpreted as an unbalanced attempt to target the army’s supply networks that had recently enabled a number of critical battlefield victories for the SAF and created a shift in momentum in the conflict. But lacking the minimum votes from even half the UN Security Council to expand the embargo in addition to the likely prospect of a Russian veto, the US agreed to a one-month technical extension of the current embargo in the hope that an additional month of lobbying would add supporters to its initiative. It won’t.
The final piece of Washington’s maximum pressure campaign came last week when it chose to tighten its noose around Khartoum by making General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan’s attendance at the General Assembly contingent upon his signing of Washington’s stale ceasefire deal. Acts of diplomatic blackmail are high-risk gambits and, in this case, reflect more Washington’s own deep embarrassment and growing frustration at failing to get a deal signed than the army’s intransigence.
Since Washington first tabled its ceasefire proposal in the days leading up to last year’s UN General Assembly, it has been repeatedly stymied by both sides’ unwillingness to sign. But fighters are going to fight. Especially if they believe that the deal they are meant to sign only allows the other side to regroup and rearm. Indeed, a ceasefire signed in a vacuum that offers neither side a glimpse of their respective futures is more likely to entrench the de facto partition that already divides the country.
That is clearly an outcome that benefits the Rapid Support Forces, which is eager to formalise its rule over large swaths of the country, more than Sudan’s army, which argues that it is fighting to make the country whole again.
The often-repeated belief held by Washington that both sides are continuing to fight because they think they can achieve a total military victory misdiagnoses each side’s motivations. They fight because they believe they have to win to ensure their own survival.
This motivation to fight was only given further fuel by the US Department of State’s hastily issued statement in the midst of the UN’s marathon meetings last week, arguing that, “Neither the Sudanese Armed Forces, the Rapid Support Forces, nor their respective leaders, represent legitimate, constitutional governance for Sudan – they rule through force of arms alone. The conduct of each leader of the warring factions renders them ineligible to govern the country.”
This may be true in the long term, but it is hardly a diplomatically smart tactic to employ if trying to persuade either side to lay down their arms in the near term. Instead, the statement appears intended more as an ex post facto justification for Washington’s latest diplomatic sleight of hand in barring al-Burhan from delivering his country’s address to the UN General Assembly.
Leave aside the breach of international law and diplomatic protocol or the policy inconsistency that saw leaders from military juntas across Africa, not to mention an Iranian delegation, receive visas to New York. Washington’s choice appears to be more than a simple strong-arm tactic to achieve a ceasefire and raises the question of whether it is ratcheting up its pressure even further to the only place left for it to go by trying to bring about more immediate regime change in the country.
Taken alongside the manifold measures this year to punish, isolate and delegitimise Sudan’s army, the argument is hard to ignore. But here too, a US approach that has largely been driven by tactics and not strategy risks making solutions even more difficult to achieve. Already, Washington’s move has left it isolated among the broad Western, Arab and African coalitions that are pressing not merely for a quick ceasefire but for a more comprehensive and lasting peace that will return Sudan to a stable national and regional footing.
Many countries have since expressed quiet disappointment that the US missed an important opportunity for diplomacy, not for al-Burhan to express his views on the war but for the military leader to hear loudly and collectively the calls for peace from dozens of assembled world leaders. Most serious was Saudi Arabia’s warning that it would review its participation in the US-led Quad initiative going forward.
The Trump administration has little progress to show since it announced last summer its ambition to bring peace to Sudan. Instead, the administration appears to be making many of the same mistakes past US peacemaking efforts have made by believing that diplomatic pressure alone will shape battlefield outcomes and aid the cause of peace.
Last week, Washington took this approach to an extreme. But the isolation intended for Sudan’s army has ricocheted back onto Washington. Reversing course and engaging the war’s belligerents are today not merely necessary for the US to save face and maintain a diplomatic coalition it aims to lead, but they are the only thing that will save lives in Sudan.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
